


Into the Rare Somewhere

by biichama (biichan)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sburb/Sgrub Sessions, F/F, Hidden aliens, Language Barrier, Nonverbal Communication
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-13
Updated: 2015-01-13
Packaged: 2018-03-07 09:48:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3170381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biichan/pseuds/biichama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the spaceship crashes in the woods behind your house nobody believes you about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Into the Rare Somewhere

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lox/gifts).



_When the spaceship crashes in the woods behind your house nobody believes you about it. Not your mom, not your teachers, not your friends. They think you’re just fooling around, that you were drunk as a skunk that night, that mysterious spaceships are the Roxy Lalonde equivalent of pink elephants._

_You were drunk. But you know what you saw._

_Janey quotes some stuff about how simplest explanation of things is usually the right one and you type back furiously that you’re familiar with the idea of Occam’s Razor (although that’s not how you spell it at the time), that you may be a teen alcoholic but you’re not stupid! And then you throw some good old S-lock Holmes in her face about things however improbable and then you go and hack SETI’s website to calm yourself down._

_That still doesn’t change that you saw the spaceship land, even if it’s not there anymore._

\--

The whole thing started when Meenah decided to steal a starship.

“Requisition a starship,” Aranea called it but no, it was definitely stealing. Premeditated stealing at that. It had happened shortly after Kankri’s sixth wriggling day, although the plans must have been in the works for perigees. And, as it turned out, Porrim herself provided the signal for putting the starship stealing plans into action.

Or rather, her lusus did.

Even Virgin Mother Grubs leave behind matriorbs when they expire. And once Porrim had extracted it, there was really nothing keeping them on Beforus, wasn’t there? With a matriorb of their own, there was no reason the twelve of them _couldn’t_ strike out for some far-off planet and build their own little empire there. It wasn’t like Her Imperial Benevolence was going to step down and let Meenah take the throne any time soon--or any time ever.

Mituna was supposed to pilot it, which he complained about long and loudly, but there wasn’t really anyone else with the right kind of psionics in their group to do it except Damara and Damara was only willing to step in as relief pilot so Mituna could rest from time to time. Or, anyway, that’s what Rufioh translated she’d said.

They’d really have to learn her dialect at some point--or she’d have to learn Standard Beforan. Either one.

They’d thought it would take a perigee, maybe, to find a suitable planet without an existing troll colony. It had taken a sweep and a half and even that one was inhabited. But Mituna refused to go any further and as far as any of them could tell, the aliens on the planet were still fairly primitive.

They’d have to make the best of it.

\--

_You get sober. You’d been thinking of doing it anyway, but the spaceship debacle was the final straw. It’s not easy, it’s about the hardest thing in the world for you, and about the only help you get from your mom is that she starts locking up the liquor cabinet and occasionally gives you a lift to your Alateen meetings when she’s got writer’s block._

_But you do it anyway. Nobody took Roxy the Funny Drunk seriously. They’re going to take the New Roxy seriously and they’re going to believe you once you prove that there really are aliens in the woods._

_When you crave a drink, that’s when you go out in the woods and set a new trap. You’re going to capture one of those aliens. Then they’ll believe you._

\--

The starship they’d stolen was one of the better models. It was equipped for underwater travel or burrowing underground and that’s what they did. They used the ship to burrow into the ground of the clearing they came down on and Horuss used his robots to dig tunnels for the future colony and they spread themselves out in a series of troll-made tunnels and caverns under the alien forest, living as their primitive ancestors once had, before they crawled out of the caverns, blinking at the glow of the moons.

This planet only had one moon, a light grey one with no sub-satellite. Porrim thinks it looks lonely. She’s taken to sneaking outside to the surface world during the day when everyone else is asleep. She’s not the only one, she knows. She’s come across Rufioh and Damara heading out the hidden side-tunnel entrance at the same time she’s returned from one of her own trips and she’s kept their secret. She can’t blame them. By the time there’ll be enough trolls and an extensive enough underground tunnel network for them to reveal themselves to the aliens, it’s very likely the two of them will be elderly indeed. If they want to enjoy their new home while they can, it’s their prerogative.

After all, Porrim has similar enough reasons for her own diurnal adventures. Once the wiggler Mother Grub is grown, it will be her responsibility to tend to the brooding caverns. Her days of walking under an open sky are distinctly numbered.

But for the rest of the sweep, at least, there are alien trees to walk under, alien lakes to toss miniature stones in and watch the ripples spread. It’s getting closer to this planet’s dark season and the previously rather dull-looking alien trees are starting to show some color.

They should probably give the planet a name, eventually. Once they can actually all agree on one.

\--

_You finally catch your alien about a year after the spaceship came down. It’s one of the traps you set. She’s dangling from the tree branch by her feet--you assume it’s a she, anyway. She’s wearing a rather elegant evening gown, from what you can tell, and also lace underwear that leaves pretty much nothing to the imagination, which is somewhat awkward, as gravity has pulled the skirt of her elegant evening gown clear over her head._

_You’re not sure how you feel about that, especially since what you could see beyond the lace wasn’t very human at all._

_You cut her down and explain she’s coming with you and it turns out that she doesn’t speak a word of English, so you try to convey things with gestures and pointing and you don’t think she quite gets everything you’re trying to tell her, but that’s okay, because she laughs and it turns out that she’s got a really nice laugh._

_You know, for a grey, horned alien girl._

\--

The alien that rescues her is named “Roxy” or possibly that’s her species. Porrim isn’t sure. They’ve been trying to learn the alien languages from their broadcasts, of course, but there’s so _many_ of them--it’s ridiculous, really, they aren’t even dialects of each other, most of them--and Porrim realizes with embarrassment that none of the ones she’s been troubling herself with are the ones this alien speaks.

That doesn’t seem to bother Roxy too much, giving the rather amusing pantomiming she resorts to in order to communicate better with Porrim and then she starts pointing to things and naming them in her language and that is actually useful. Porrim helpfully supplies the names to their closest Beforan equivalents and soon she knows the words in the alien language for sky and tree and nut creature and hopbeast.

They start to walk toward the lake together, closer to the alien hive.

For an alien, Roxy is actually quite pretty, even if she’s hornless and fangless and the wrong color altogether. She’s got an infectious laugh and a playful manner and a rather endearing way of biting her lip when she’s hesitant and brushing the stray hairs out of her face.

She seems very impressed by Porrim’s tattoos. Porrim lets her touch them. It’s a gentle touch, one that sends little thrills up Porrim’s torso pillar, and she wonders what it might be like to kiss an alien.

They’re walking closer together now. Roxy’s taken her hand, lacing their digits together, and she’s smiling and humming and she keeps looking at Porrim’s face and Porrim smiles back and it’s really no trouble to pull Roxy into her arms before they leave the woods, to dip her down and kiss her and it’s less fangy than Porrim is used to, but she’d recommend kissing an alien to anyone.

\--

_You never do take the alien you found back to show everyone. Instead you and Porrim sit together on the shore of the lake, watching the sun set over the water._

**Author's Note:**

> And then the flirting ended up being way more nonverbal than I originally meant it to be. The tune Roxy's humming is ["Stranger In Paradise"](http://youtu.be/iB__m9EeDgU?t=56s) from the musical _Kismet_. It's where I got the fic title from.
> 
> I hope you enjoy your story! I had an interesting time writing it!


End file.
